It’s been great to see how many women are standing for women’s spaces on this thread and who disagree with older boys in changing rooms.
A couple of years ago I was getting changed after swimming at the gym, it’s like OP’s gym - out of town, the pool is the only thing children can use, expensive membership and there are other local leisure centres with family changing rooms and a children’s pool nearby whereas this gym has no family changing and just men’s and ladies changing rooms and one disabled cubicle.
The women’s changing room is open plan with lockers and benches and showers with glass doors so not much privacy.
I walked into the changing room after my swim and there was a woman and boy who had come out of the pool before me. The woman was doing her makeup and talking on her phone whilst the boy who seemed about 11/12 was walking round the changing room fully dressed.
I wanted to say something but I’m not great at confrontation and it was difficult when she was on the phone, I wanted to wait till they left but I was rushing so went for a shower with my back to the cubicle door.
When I looked round the boy was just stood watching whilst his mother was still on the phone, I got angry and told him it was rude to stare and to go away. I quickly finished my shower and when I turned the water off I heard the boy saying
“mum that lady shouted at me because I saw her bosoms”
His mother said “you shouldn’t have been looking I told you to sit here”
The boy said “mum how come some women are hairy and others aren’t like that lady?”
By this point I was seething angry that I was an object of curiosity and I felt so uncomfortable so I went over to the boys mother in my towel and she ended her phone call. I told her that it was highly inappropriate for her son to be not only in the women’s changing area but to just be roaming round it peeping at people and he should have been in the men’s.
She told me she felt safer with her son coming in with her and she didn’t want him changing in front of grown men, she also said he’s curious about bodies and stares at people so she didn’t want him getting in trouble for staring at men and said as there are no family changing rooms she would continue to bring him in.
She tried to lie and say he was only 9 but she had also mentioned his school on her phone call which is a secondary school!
She wasn’t going to change her mind so I spoke to staff who said they would put up signs saying the cut off point for children of the opposite sex to enter would be 8 in future. People still tried to ignore it and most staff were good at policing it except for a female staff member who had a son and often commented that women shouldn’t have issues with boys entering the womens because it was safer, she was reported for it so many times that in the end she left or was sacked.
After the experience with the woman on her phone just leaving her son to watch me changing I posted on the gym website reviews about older boys not being allowed in the women’s changing rooms, I was ripped to pieces online, threatened, doxxed and a women who knows me and saw my post even told me I was “sad and pathetic” in the street for complaining.
I also fell out with one of my best friends after she saw the post because she still takes her neurotypical son into women’s changing rooms and he’s nearly 12 and towers over me. I’m a tiny woman and bigger adolescent boys could easily overpower me.
I used to look after children with autism and learning disabilities and other support needs and we had to take a few each week to swinming lessons, there were two female members of staff and we had a mix of boys and girls aged 11/12 On one occasion the local pool we used with cubicles and family changing rooms was closed for renovations so we were told to use a different pool which just had open men’s and women’s changing rooms.
We had to use the ladies but it was a really stressful situation, the children were curious and staring at others changing, the boys were shouting “boobies look boobies!” And one boy was trying to touch his female peers. As staff we couldn’t cope and had to leave and just cancel the lesson.
I also have a friend who takes her autistic son into women’s toilets and changing rooms and he’s nearly 13, he displays a lot of sexual behaviours and it’s completely inappropriate. She’s a single parent and insistent he can’t change alone in the men’s and she doesn’t want him to miss out. He can easily overpower her and I have told her that she’s being selfish and putting other women in a terrible situation, I refuse to go anywhere with her and her son alone because I’m scared of him.
He has tried to take photographs and peep under doors and she has no way of stopping him, but he also behaves in a similar way if he goes alone into the men’s changing rooms and toilets so the only option she has is to not take him out in public unless there are more suitable facilities.
I sympathise completely with people who have neurodivergent children but the answer is to campaign for more suitable spaces and not give up women’s spaces to boys.
Like other people who have posted I was also a victim of sexual abuse as a child by another child - an older boy. I think it’s naive to assume that boys wouldn’t be interested if there were girls of a similar age undressing in front of them.
I think it’s far more reasonable for boys to use the men’s changing rooms and their mums to wait outside or for them to go with another male then to come into the women’s and make women and other girls feel uncomfortable.
There is a huge difference between a 6 year old boy and an 11 year old adolescent. People have made comments not to sexualise children but the fact is at this age boys are curious and it’s not appropriate for them to be around naked women/girls. Girls going through puberty are extremely conscious of it and boys tease them, an 11 year old girl doesn’t want to go to school with a boy who has seen her naked and to worry about him telling his friends or making comments.
If you are too scared to let your son get changed in the correct sex changing room and won’t make allowances like getting changed at the poolside then you need to find other swimming facilities. Getting changed in women’s spaces is against the rules and not an option, it’s incredibly selfish to think your sons desire to swim trumps the comfort and safety of all the women and girls who have the right to these spaces.
If you are unhappy with the changing facilities then it’s your job to campaign for better options for boys. Nothing is going to change if you just keep bringing boys into women’s areas. A pp mentions working in a leisure centre and people breaking the rules because they are worried about their boys safety but doing nothing to change the situation and not complaining about the changing room set up. The more people speak up the better chance they have of being heard.
My nephew has been going into men’s changing rooms since he was 7, my sister puts him in his swimming shorts and a tracksuit so he gets undressed quickly and she shouts through the door to check on him, he walks to the poolside alone. When he’s finished his swim she puts a towel poncho over him at the poolside and towel dries him then he goes back to the changing room, dresses quickly and waits outside the ladies for her. He had nothing with difficult buttons or laces and nothing to put in a locker except his clothes.
He was nervous to start with but my sister never made it into a big deal and he was fine. There were often other boys getting changed with their dads and even young girls.
I have asked many men about their experiences changing in the men’s and they all said similar, unless you send your son in after a football match or other sporting event it’d be unusual for him to be completely surrounded by naked men with no other children or dads - especially if you are visiting during swimming classes or children’s hours.
We need to do all we can to keep women’s spaces for ourselves, the more we accommodate the bigger chance we have of being made to share them, it is nice to see that the majority of people on this thread recognise this and despite a lot of people having boys themselves they make their own lives harder to protect other women. This is the attitude we all need and what feminism is really about.